Fortune Smiles: Stories

by Adam Johnson Narrated by W. Morgan Sheppard, Johnathan McClain, Cassandra Campbell, Various

Overview

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson is one of America's most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson's new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don't often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.
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In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. “Nirvana,” which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous”-first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology-a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.*“George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door.*And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.

Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America's greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.

Readers:
“Nirvana” read by Johnathan McClain*
“Hurricanes Anonymous” read by Dominic Hoffman*
“Interesting Facts” read by Cassandra Campbell*
“George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” read by W. Morgan Sheppard*
“Dark Meadow” read by Will Damron*
“Fortune Smiles” read by Greg Chun*

Advance praise for Fortune Smiles

“How do you follow a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel? For Johnson, the answer is a story collection, and the tales are hefty and memorable. . . . In the title story, two North Korean criminals adjust to post-defection life in South Korea. . . . Often funny, even when they're wrenchingly sad, the stories provide one of the truest satisfactions of reading: the opportunity to sink into worlds we otherwise would know little or nothing about.”-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A half-dozen sometimes Carver-esque yarns that find more-or-less ordinary people facing extraordinary challenges and somehow holding up. Tragedy is always close to the surface in Johnson's work-with tragicomic layerings. . . . Bittersweet, elegant, full of hard-won wisdom: this is no ordinary book, either.”-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*

Praise for Adam Johnson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Orphan Master's Son

“Harrowing and deeply affecting . . . a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.”-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Remarkable . . . the single best work of fiction published [this year].”-The Wall Street Journal

Editorial Reviews

DECEMBER 2015 - AudioFile

Don’t let the title fool you: Darkness lingers in the stories in FORTUNE SMILES. Even the humor, which abounds, is dark and somewhat brooding. Each of the six performers brings an individual torch to illuminate the stories in unique ways, but leading the pack are Jonathan McClain and Cassandra Campbell. McClain opens the collection with “Nirvana,” relating the protagonist’s pain as he tends to his paralyzed wife in a performance both loving and resigned. Campbell walks us through the messy aftermath of a wife’s double mastectomy in “Interesting Facts”; she is the only female narrator, but she pulls no punches in relating the pathos of the story. All the narrators are fine performers who do great justice to Johnson’s painful, memorable stories. N.J.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 06/22/2015
How do you follow a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel? For Johnson (The Orphan Master’s Son), the answer is a story collection, and the tales within are hefty and memorable. Johnson goes deep (and long—there are only six pieces in this 300 pager) into unknown worlds. In the title story, two North Korean criminals adjust to post-defection life in South Korea; in “Nirvana,” a man deals with his wife’s illness by creating an app that lets people talk to the (fictional) recently assassinated president. Johnson lets us spend time with an East German prison commander whose former office is a tour stop in a “museum of torture”; a man coping with hurricanes Katrina and Rita and an array of personal problems; and, in “Dark Meadow,” the highlight of a very strong collection, a pedophile trying to behave himself in the face of a variety of temptations. What these very different stories have in common is their assurance: the environments Johnson creates, along with the often problematic choices their inhabitants make, are totally believable. Escaping back to North Korea by balloon? Sure. Going to AA meetings because they offer child care? Makes sense if your ex has just dumped a toddler on you in post-Rita Lake Charles. Often funny, even when they’re wrenchingly sad, the stories provide one of the truest satisfactions of reading: the opportunity to sink into worlds we otherwise would know little or nothing about, ones we might even cross the street to avoid. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

Advance praise for Fortune Smiles
 
“The stories in Fortune Smiles fizz with imagination, miniature worlds exploding onto the page. Adam Johnson’s prose is so pared-down, like the setting for precious stones, he gives us just what’s necessary to let the facets sparkle, without distraction. I loved this book!”—M. L. Stedman, New York Times bestselling author of The Light Between Oceans

“[Adam Johnson] serves up six sinewy stories that shock and surprise in his edgy, inviting Fortune Smiles. . . . [They’re] compulsively readable tales about characters whose lives are largely ignored, undervalued, or simply uncharted and whose voices we seldom hear.”—Elle

“How do you follow a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel? For [Adam] Johnson, the answer is a story collection, and the tales are hefty and memorable. . . . In the title story, two North Korean criminals adjust to post-defection life in South Korea. . . . Often funny, even when they’re wrenchingly sad, the stories provide one of the truest satisfactions of reading: the opportunity to sink into worlds we otherwise would know little or nothing about.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A half-dozen sometimes Carver-esque yarns that find more-or-less ordinary people facing extraordinary challenges and somehow holding up. Tragedy is always close to the surface in Johnson’s work—with tragicomic layerings. . . . Bittersweet, elegant, full of hard-won wisdom: this is no ordinary book, either.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Praise for Adam Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Orphan Master’s Son

“Harrowing and deeply affecting . . . a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Remarkable . . . a work of high adventure, surreal coincidences and terrible violence, seeming to straddle the line between cinematic fantasy and brutal actuality . . . the single best work of fiction published [this year].”—The Wall Street Journal

“A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That’s the genius of The Orphan Master’s Son. Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mâché creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable. . . . Imagine Charles Dickens paying a visit to Pyongyang, and you see the canvas on which Johnson is painting here.”—The Washington Post

“Adam Johnson has pulled off literary alchemy, first by setting his novel in North Korea, a country that few of us can imagine, then by producing such compelling characters, whose lives unfold at breakneck speed. I was engrossed right to the amazing conclusion. The result is pure gold, a terrific novel.”—Abraham Verghese

“An epic feat of storytelling.”—Zadie Smith

“A triumph of imagination . . . [Grade:] A.”—Entertainment Weekly

Library Journal

03/01/2015
After making his mark in 2012 with The Orphan Master's Son, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a New York Times best seller, Johnson returns with a large-scale short story collection. In the title piece, a woman with cancer becomes distraught as she contemplates her family living on without her. Elsewhere, a young man and his girlfriend scour post-Katrina New Orleans for the mother of his son, and a former Stasi agent reconsiders his past.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2015-06-01
A half-dozen sometimes Carver-esque yarns that find more-or-less ordinary people facing extraordinary challenges and somehow holding up. Tragedy is always close to the surface in Johnson's work—with tragicomic layerings, sometimes, but it's tragedy all the same. So it is with the opening story of the six here, "Nirvana," which takes its title from the Kurt Cobain-led rock band but shares a spirit with near-future films like Her and Gattaca. A software engineer, desperate to do right by his paralyzed wife, reanimates people from the past: "After the doctor left," the narrator says matter-of-factly, "I went into the garage and started making the president." It's science fiction of a kind but with an extra element of disspiritment: people exist, but we long for simulacra instead of them, "like she's forgotten that her arms don't work and there's no him to embrace." With more than a nod to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Orphan Master's Son (2012), Johnson calls on two North Korean defectors who, now in the South, haven't quite got their new world sussed out but are starting to get an inkling of how things work: "Christian talk, when said in a non-Christian way, scares these Southerners to death." Their lessons in fitting in include essentials such as "handling money, hygiene, being pleasant, avoiding crime," but it's clear that no amount of instruction will make them feel at home. Safe houses, hospices, hospitals: these are the theaters where many of the stories take place, all enshrouded in a certain incomprehension—but, to Johnson's great credit, seldom in hopelessness, for his characters are inclined to endure against the odds: "You turn the ignition and drop the van in gear, and you know this is no ordinary event." Bittersweet, elegant, full of hard-won wisdom: this is no ordinary book, either.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172020070
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/18/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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